With George Steinbrenner’s hearse ready to cart him away from the Yankees’ managing job, Joe Torre sat calmly in his Yankee Stadium office yesterday before Game 3 of the ALDS against the Indians and answered questions about his future in a calm voice and understood at this time of the year when the Yankees aren’t playing well his job always becomes Topic A.

His players prepared to play a game if they lost would cost Torre his job after The Boss said Saturday that he didn’t think Torre would be back if the Yankees didn’t climb out of the 0-2 ditch they were in when Roger Clemens took the mound last night in the best-of-five affair.

The Yanks came through, beating the Indians 8-4 to force Game 4 tonight.

“It’s not right,” a stern-faced Mariano Rivera told The Post. “Mr. T doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t pitch or hit. The job he has done for us this season has been tremendous.”

Steinbrenner was mum on Torre’s future when he left his Manhattan residence and when he arrived at the Stadium an hour before the game. It was his first Stadium appearance since Opening Day.

Throughout the Yankees’ organizational people were talking about Steinbrenner’s comments, about the timing of them and whom he will turn to if he has to fire the second most successful manager in franchise history.

“I am not surprised by this because it’s old news,” a member of Steinbrenner’s inner circle said. “We have known for a long time how he felt about (Torre).”

Some believe Torre has to at least take the Yankees to the World Series to stay. Others think the only way Steinbrenner brings back Torre – whose contract is up following the last out of the Yankees’ season – is for the Yankees to win the World Series.

Torre talked to Steinbrenner this past Wednesday and had lunch with him in Tampa on Sept. 26 and said yesterday the ultimatum The Boss laid down Saturday night wasn’t given to him.

“But we all know in the last couple of years there has been some question,” said Torre, who is being paid $7 million for his 12th season. “It’s certainly not enjoyable to put up with but it goes with the territory.”

Depending on whom you talked to yesterday, The Boss shot off his mouth without Torre’s successor in mind, or Steinbrenner wants to insert Don Mattingly and pair him with a veteran bench coach. Others in the organization are pushing former Yankees player, coach, Marlins manager and current YES announcer Joe Girardi. The wild card is Tony La Russa, who is rumored to be on the move out of St. Louis. La Russa certainly has the credentials and he is from Steinbrenner’s beloved Tampa.

“You know it’s New York, it’s part of what you go through on a daily basis,” said Mattingly, a former Yankee great and Torre’s bench coach.

The question with Mattingly is that he has never managed a team at any level. Girardi became a Yankee on the recommendation of Don Zimmer, a man Steinbrenner despises. La Russa and the pressures of New York may not be a good marriage.

After being credited with talking The Boss out of firing Torre following last October’s loss to the Tigers in the ALDS and saying he was to blame for the slow start this year when Steinbrenner flirted with firing Torre, GM Brian Cashman wasn’t as strong yesterday.

“Joe knows I’ve supported him every time throughout the process. He’s our manager and naturally I support him now. And George Steinbrenner is supporting him right now, there’s no doubt about that, too,” Cashman said. “Obviously no one is promised tomorrow, myself included. We need a game to keep us going. It’s as simple as that.”